By Lyle Fitzsimmons
I’m not sure how anyone else is feeling. But I’m just sad.
And it’s not just because another athlete – yet another boxer – has died too soon.
Sports star or not, it’s a tragedy when anyone dies.
Because somewhere, regardless of a person’s notoriety or bank balance or station in life, someone else cries and feels an emptiness that the fallen one used to fill.
Whether it’s their father, their mother, a sibling or a trusted friend, everyone feels it. And regardless of the circumstances involved or the perceptions on the outside, it’s difficult.
So whomever and wherever they are, I feel worst today for those who mourn Vernon Forrest.
But in my own little way, I feel bad for all of us as sports fans, too.
I don’t know about anyone else, but each time I read a headline or hear a broadcast indicating yet another big-time athlete has met yet another untimely end – whether by his own hand or someone else’s – I feel I’ve also lost a little something.
When I got a text Sunday on a runway in Newark – “V. Forrest dead in ATL” – it happened again.
But I can’t sit here today and carry on as if Forrest and I were best friends. We were not.
I saw him fight on television several times. I saw him fight live once. Our face-to-face interaction was limited to a brief chat following that one fight – against Ike Quartey – in August 2006.
Regardless, as a relevant champion in two weight classes, he was clearly among the elite.
And opinions from those who knew him well say he was a good man, too.
So I’ll let them stand as a fitting eulogy.
Instead, my loss stems from realization that every time a sports icon becomes a news item in the manner Forrest, Arturo Gatti and Alexis Arguello have recently, a little more of the myth I’ve clung to since childhood gets rubbed away.
The myth always told me that while they roll out of bed and put on pants a leg at a time like the rest of us, somehow world-class athletes were larger than life, and somehow the pedestal I put them on as a fan would safely insulate both them and me from harsh reality below.
As I got older, I knew the reality still existed in a different section of the paper or elsewhere on the newscast, but as long as I wore jerseys, memorized statistics and debated dream fights with fellow fans, I’d remain blissful in a cocoon where those things were all that mattered.
Sports stars won games. Sports stars performed magic. Sports stars created memories.
They didn’t commit suicide. They didn’t get choked to death. They didn’t get carjacked.
They were bulletproof heroes. Not unfortunate victims.
Allowed to live life to a natural, old-age end… not gunned down in a gas station parking lot.
Things like that only happened outside “our” world. To people not gifted enough for a place on a pedestal. And to those not lucky enough – as I have always been – to get an up-close chance to worship and document heroes whose heights I could only envy.
Needless to say, the last few weeks have been a bit jarring.
Now that Arguello, Gatti and Forrest are gone via unsavory circumstance – not to mention Steve McNair in the same timeframe – the boundary between my fantasy and reality is rapidly eroding. And it leaves the awareness that we’re all pretty much walking the same fuzzy line.
Sports stars still have more cash in their wallets than I do.
They still can run faster, jump higher and punch harder than I can.
But a spot on the pedestal no longer guarantees a happier ending than I’ll one day have.
Arguello was a three-division kingpin, but not immune to inner demons. Gatti was a blood-and-guts warrior, but couldn’t achieve domestic tranquility. And Forrest was a brilliant combination of fighter and role model, but wasn’t safe from random violence in the street.
I’m sad for them. I’m sad for us. I’m sad for me.
It doesn’t impact my love for sports and my admiration for those doing things I’ve long deemed impossible, but it does leave me unsettled knowing the same comfortable innocence I grew up with won’t exist for my son as he makes his own trek to adulthood.
And if the rest of this summer is indicative, the very moment we come to terms with this loss, we’ll only be a text or Tweet away from another that’ll set us grappling to make sense of it.
I’m for progress and everything else, but if it’s all the same to you… I’d like my cocoon back.
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This week’s title-fight schedule:
SATURDAY
WBO junior welterweight title – Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Timothy Bradley (champion) vs. Nate Campbell (No. 1 contender)
Bradley (24-0, 11 KO): First WBO title defense; Unbeaten in three title fights (3-0, 0 KO)
Campbell (33-5-1, 25 KO): First title fight at 140 pounds; One win in three title fights (1-2, 0 KO)
FitzHitz says: Campbell in 10
Vacant WBC super lightweight title – Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Devon Alexander (No. 2 contender) vs. Junior Witter (No. 3 contender)
Alexander (18-0, 11 KO): First title fight; Won three straight by KO/TKO
Witter (37-2-2, 22 KO): Former WBC champion (2006-08); Five career title fights (3-2, 2 KO)
FitzHitz says: Witter by decision
Vacant IBF welterweight title – Uncasville, Conn.
Delvin Rodriguez (No. 2 contender) vs. Isaac Hlatshwayo (No. 3 contender)
Rodriguez (24-2-2, 14 KO): First title fight; Fought 12-round draw with Hlatshwayo in 2008
Hlatshwayo (28-1-1, 10 KO): Former IBO champ at 135 and 147; Unbeaten in six title fights (6-0, 1 KO)
FitzHitz says: Hlatshwayo by decision
Last week’s picks: 2-0
Overall picks record: 22-6 (78.6 percent)
Lyle Fitzsimmons is an award-winning 20-year sports journalist and a full voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Reach him at fitzbitz@msn.com or follow him at twitter.com/fitzbitz.